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Agriculture faces a challenge on which the future of the planet depends, to a large extent: that of feeding a growing population through the sustainable use of natural resources, essential for producing food, but also for life on Earth. In this context, concepts such as the "carbon footprint" and "water footprint" arise, which refer to the amount of these resources that are invested in the production of a given good, food or service.

These concepts are about the cost or impact that producing certain product has on nature, and a way of measuring whether or not their consumption is sustainable. Another concept may be added to these, this one having to do with another limited resource about which there is less awareness, but which is as essential for life as water or energy: soil, the erosion of which means lost nutrients, biodiversity and water retention capacity.

The "soil footprint" of a food is the amount of soil that is lost during its cultivation process, and it is calculated by dividing the erosion rate by its degree of productivity. This is a term present in the "A Soil Pact for Europe" community strategy, which has now been formally defined and applied in Spain by researchers Andrés Peñuela, Vanesa García Gamero and Tom Vanwalleghem, with the Hydrology and Agricultural Hydraulics group of the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence—Department of Agronomy at the University of Córdoba (DAUCO).

The objective, they explain, is to simplify the communication of the serious problem of soil erosion in order to involve consumers, adding them to the action network currently comprised of the scientific community, political and regulatory bodies, and the agricultural sector. The findings were published in Soil Security.

The research team's approach is as follows: if concepts such as "water footprint" have managed to permeate society, generating awareness of the origin of food and its costs, and promoting changes in consumption habits, introducing the "soil footprint" could contribute to the transition towards more sustainable production models that are also responsible towards this resource.

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